On Wednesday, Gov. Pritzker presented his Fiscal Year 2022 budget blueprint in a pre-recorded speech delivered from a new vaccine clinic at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield. The Pritzker budget calls for $41.6 billion in spending and ignores a Constitutional requirement that budgets be balanced according to existing revenue. Despite the Constitutional mandate, Gov. Pritzker is relying on $1.5 billion in funds that do not statutorily exist today.

The Governor generates this additional revenue by diverting money earmarked for local municipalities, and statewide road and infrastructure improvements to the state budget General Fund, and through a massive backdoor tax increase on Illinois businesses.

Pritzker wants to hold back 10 percent of the Local Distributive Government Funds (LGDF) that are owed to local municipalities across the state. These are funds generated at the local level through sales taxes that move through the state and are channeled back to local communities for the delivery of local services. He also seeks to divert a portion of gasoline taxes and cigarette taxes—both earmarked for state infrastructure projects—to the budget’s General Fund.

But it is the Illinois business community that will be hit the hardest if the Pritzker revenue plan is approved. The Governor recommends walking back previously negotiated tax incentives that assist business and job creation, and eliminating the bipartisan-negotiated Blue Collar Jobs Act of 2019. The estimated hit to the business community is nearly $1 billion.